The Connection seems like the vaguest of titles, but once you realize what the film is about it’s actually pretty perfect. It’s a new spin on William Friedkin‘s The French Connection, with the “French” part omitted because, well, the film is already French.

Jean Dujardin plays Pierre Michel, a real-life Marseilles magistrate. In 1975, he tried to take down Gaetano Zampa (Gilles Lellouche), the kingpin behind one of the biggest drug smuggling operations in history. Cédric Jimenez directs the film. Watch The Connection red-band trailer after the jump. Read More »

La French, aka The Connection for international festival audiences, jumps off from the same ’60s and ’70s drug-trafficking patterns that inspired The French Connection. Jean Dujardin stars as a young magistrate thrust into an attempt to corral international heroin smuggling, and follows his “violent six-year campaign to bring down the kingpin of a major narcotics ring.”

A French-language trailer (no subs, sorry) has arrived just in advance of the film’s world premiere at TIFF. Shot on 35mm, this one has a great look, and Dujardin seems to be in a particularly energetic mode. Cédric Jimenez directed the film, which also stars Gilles Lellouche, Céline Sallette, and Benoît Magimel. Check out The Connection trailer below. (Update: there’s an English-subbed trailer now, too!)